Email enrichment for lead qualification

I replaced my client's 3-person SDR team and saved 100+ hours monthly by automating lead research and scoring with Clay. We created a process that automatically researches, enriches, and scores leads based on 6 key data points. In this post, I'll show you exactly how we built this system that anyone can implement. 1. Industry targeting: Instead of settling for broad categories like "Software" or "Technology," given by LinkedIn or major data providers, we set up an AI enrichment in Clay that reads websites and LinkedIn data to output specific niches like "HealthTech," "Martech," etc., making targeting much more precise. 2. Seniority filtering: We went beyond basic titles like Director or VP. Using Clay's AI enrichment, we analyze complete LinkedIn profiles to categorize prospects into Tier 1, 2, or 3 based on actual decision-making authority. You could feed the AI model their complete LinkedIn profile like their work experience, summary, or any other data available. 3. Persona identification: For complex segmentation, we set up Clay to identify hyper-specific personas. For example, we could identify "sales leaders managing 10+ SDRs in cybersecurity companies,". 4. Headcount qualification: Clay provides accurate headcount data from company LinkedIn profiles. We use this in the lead-scoring process to prioritize accounts within the client's sweet spot. 5. Intent signals tracking: Clay's AI Agent or native integrations can get critical signals like: - Job changes/Champion movements - Recent relevant posts - Hiring activity - Expansion/funding events - Tech stack changes - Event/conference participation 6. Lead scoring: To score leads with 100% accuracy, we use all the data points above and assign scores: - We pick scoring criteria based on the client's ICP (industry, headcount, seniority) - Set up simple comparisons (ranges for company size, exact matches for industries) - Assign points based on importance (right industry = 10 points, Tier 1 decision-maker = 10 points) - Clay adds everything up automatically This gives instant clarity on which leads deserve attention first. 7. CRM integration & data enrichment: Clay pushes everything directly to the CRM: - All enriched data flows straight to HubSpot or Salesforce - Custom variables map additional research findings to correct fields - Leads get tagged by priority score - The sales team only works on qualified, high-scoring prospects - Everything stays updated automatically with scheduled runs We also set up Clay to pull existing contacts from their CRM: - Dedupe them automatically - Re-enrich and score them based on fresh data - Push back with updated priorities - Let the team focus only on prospects most likely to convert This system now handles the same workload that previously took 3 people, while also delivering higher quality leads that convert better.

Most outbound teams think their main problem is good research. But that’s not it. The real blocker? Reachability. If you can’t find a verified email or mobile number, your sequence never lands. Game over before you even begin. I see this all the time in B2B SaaS. Sales teams invest hours in ICP exercises, playbooks, sequencing, and social proof. That work doesn’t matter if you don’t have the right contact data. You’re building a race car with no gas in the tank. Here’s where things break down: You buy a big list.   Half the emails bounce.   A third of the mobile numbers go nowhere.   Your best reps burn time chasing ghosts.   Your reporting looks off because “total leads” is not the same as “reachable leads.” Lately, I’ve been digging into FullEnrich to see if it really cracks the reachability puzzle. Most tools brag about quantity, but few deliver both quality and integration. What stands out so far: - Pulls live data from 20 premium vendors (not just scraping the public web). - Triple email verification (so even “catch-all” domains get confirmed and your bounce rate drops through the floor.) - Mobile validation is more than “does this number exist?” It actually checks ownership, so you’re dialing the right person. - Seamless push directly to your CRM and workflows, so enrichment fits in with your flow. No more manual imports or mismatched records. Here’s how I’d bake this into Sales Enablement: 1. Make data enrichment part of every seller's checklist before any outreach goes out. No verified contact info, no sequence. 2. Route cell numbers into your call-first plays. Landlines or generic company numbers go into slower, nurture cadences. 3. Start tracking “reachable contacts” as a KPI, right next to meetings booked and response rates. It tells you if your pipeline is built on solid ground. Most teams don’t realize how much pipeline they lose at this step. But the upside is huge: if every rep can reach just 10% more of your actual market, that’s game-changing. But in order for this to really stick & scale, enablement has to drive the process. Training on enrichment, data hygiene, and how to pivot when contact info isn’t perfect is just as important as the tech itself. What’s working for other sales orgs? Are you tracking reachability as a core metric? What’s helped unlock more “real” connects for your team? #fullenrichpartner

Why Cold Email Isn’t Enough Anymore... (And What’s Working in 2025) Sending cold emails to your entire target market and crossing your fingers for replies? Yeah… that doesn’t work like it used to. Buyers today are pitch-deaf. They've been hit with every sales angle under the sun. So, how do you stand out and engage prospects before they’ve made up their mind? The answer: Trigger Capture Systems - workflows that monitor signals like social engagement, website visits, and industry news to find high-intent prospects in real time. Instead of starting cold, you're stepping into the conversation exactly when your ideal customer is ready to talk. Here’s a breakdown of how this works and the tools we use: 1️⃣ Monitor Signals → LinkedIn engagement (Trigify.io) → Website visits (RB2B + Vector 👻) → Ad clicks (Vector 👻 Ad Reveal) → New funding rounds or tech adoption (Clay integrations) These signals give us insight into which companies and decision-makers are actively researching solutions or experiencing change events. 2️⃣ Enrich & Qualify in Real-Time We push signal data into Clay, which enriches the lead with key info like job title, email, phone, tech stack, and funding status (s/o Findymail). Leads are then scored based on criteria like fit, buying intent, and decision-making authority. This saves hours of manual research and helps our team prioritize high-value prospects. 3️⃣ Push Leads to Outreach → Qualified leads are sent to Instantly.ai for hyper-relevant warm email campaigns. → We notify SDRs via Slack for manual follow-up and multi-touch engagement on LinkedIn (thanks to HeyReach). → SDRs are equipped with verified phone numbers, AI-qualified data, and reasons to reach out, ensuring their calls sound personalised and relevant. Timing is everything here - when we reach out with context that matters, the reply rates are 3-4x higher than cold campaigns. Why is this approach a game-changer? You spend less time chasing cold leads and more time talking to warm prospects. It’s scalable: fewer emails, better quality, and more efficiency for your sales team. Every part of the process is automated, freeing your team to focus on closing deals. We’ve built these systems for clients, and the results have been huge... More meetings booked, shorter sales cycles, and higher close rates. --- Advanced Client

I Created a Beginner’s Playbook for Clay (Steal it for yourself below) When I first started with Clay, I overcomplicated everything. It’s a massive tool with endless potential, but once I simplified it, it felt like I unlocked a whole new world. Because to be honest, Clay is very simple to use, but like I did, many overthink it. Here’s the step-by-step playbook I wish I had when I was starting out: Step 1: Build a Targeted Lead List Start with the basics—finding the right people: → Use tools like Apollo.io or Sales Navigator to find companies and people that fit your target. → For lookalike audiences, try Ocean.io or PandaMatch 🐼—just provide a domain, and they’ll surface similar companies. → Use Store Leads for e-commerce data → BuiltWith uncovers tech stacks and key details about your prospects. Pro Tip: Clay integrates directly with most of these tools, so you can skip the manual imports. Step 2: Enrich Your Data Clay’s enrichments allow you to add depth to your data: → Example: Have someone’s LinkedIn profile? Use “Enrich person from profile” to pull their work email or job history. → Use Waterfalls to combine multiple enrichment providers like Prospeo.io, Findymail, and LeadMagic for better accuracy. → Save credits by enriching at the company level first, then lookup data for specific employees. Step 3: Filter & Segment Your Data You don’t need every lead—just the best ones: → Add columns with formulas to organize your data. Example Prompt: “What’s the first word of /Company Name?” → Add filters to remove bad leads or people you’ve already contacted. → Combine data from different lists to get a full picture and avoid duplicates. Step 4: Personalize Your Outreach Now, make your emails stand out: → Use Twain in Clay to generate personalized, relevant copy for each lead—no spintax, just great messaging. → Use AI prompts to create dynamic, tailored details for outreach. Example Prompt: “What are the last three companies /first name /last name has worked for based on their LinkedIn? Format it as a list.” → Standardize company names and job titles to avoid embarrassing mistakes in emails. Step 5: Automate Campaigns Without Losing the Human Touch Let’s get those emails out the door: → Push your enriched leads directly into tools like Smartlead or EmailBison—no need to copy and paste. → Validate emails with Reoon Technology to make sure they’re real before you send anything. → Run small tests before launching big campaigns to avoid mistakes. Pro Tip: Automation makes it faster, but don’t forget to double-check everything before you hit send. Why Clay Stands Out Clay simplifies everything. It finds leads, adds details, and helps you organize and act on your data—all in one place. If you’re new to Clay, follow this guide to keep it simple and start seeing results. What’s your favorite Clay feature?

I was an AE for 8 years, and in my time Clay, Instantly.ai and AI didn't exist. Knowing what I know now, here are some Clay plays and practices that would help me smash quota. 🔍 Smart Prospecting 1. Spot buying signals before competitors - Automatically capture job postings, funding rounds, and tech stack changes that indicate purchase readiness. - Trigify.io, Serper and some Apify scrapers can help you do this. 2. Instant lead enrichment - Turn basic contact lists into comprehensive prospect profiles with multi-source data (emails, mobile number, recent news). - LeadMagic and Findymail are goated for this. 3. Clone your best customers - Identify common patterns among your top accounts and automatically generate lookalike prospect lists. - Use PandaMatch 🐼 or Ocean.io to generate the list. 💬 Personalization at Scale 4. First messages that actually get responses - Generate relevant and segmented 1st and p.s lines. Just to name a few: number of department head count, job description posts, recently joined leader. 5. Perfect-timing outreach - Set up intelligent triggers for funding events, product launches, or hiring spikes. - Trigify.io again for this. ⚡ Outbound Efficiency 6. Quality and quantity prospecting - Use AI to create segmenting outreach per contact but use a scaleable email infra + sequencer like Instantly.ai to ensure you are doing the numbers. - If IT want you to have your own server, EmailBison is your best bet. 7. Pre-qualify every lead - use AI to check each contacts LinkedIn profile and company website to double check its within your ICP + use AI to see what are their top daily priorities. 🔄 Sustainable Growth 8. Always-fresh contact data - Keep your CRM perpetually updated so your team never wastes time on outdated information. 9. Lead Score whole TAM - prioritise your market, via scoring, all customized by your personal required traits. Just a few ideas, what other things would you guys add to help sales reps hit quota?

Your SDRs are wasting time... Here’s how I would free up 10 hours a week so they can focus on selling. Most SDRs spend 3+ hours a day on tasks that don’t involve dialing: - Company research - Finding & verifying contact info - Making coffee ☕ - Updating CRMs & sending follow-ups A much more efficient process is to automate company research, contact finding, and detecting live intent. Here’s the process I would set up for my SDRs: Step 1 - Set up a Clay account Clay will act as the hub for: - Webhook detection - Lead qualification - Lead enrichment - Data routing - CRM updates Step 2 - Data sourcing Create a new workbook table in Clay to monitor a webhook. Use multiple intent sources to send data to that webhook: - Website traffic → RB2B / Vector 👻 - Social engagement → Trigify.io - Ad clicks & views → Vector 👻 - Other intent signals → Common Room You can also create additional tables to pull in existing contacts from your CRM or generate new lists directly within Clay. Step 3 - Data enrichment Once data is collected (via webhook or manual upload), set up waterfall enrichments to automatically retrieve: - Prospect data points (Search for 'Enrich person from profile') - Company data points (Search for 'Company profile') - Prospect contact information (email & phone) (Search for 'Findymail - Find work email + find mobile numbers') These enrichments will trigger automatically whenever a new lead is added to the table. Step 4 - Routing leads to SDRs If your SDRs have varying experience levels, prioritize success by scoring leads and routing the best ones to your top performers. (To do this, search for 'Score row in Clay.') From here, you can push leads to: CRM → Mark the lead as "Lead for {{SDR name}}" Slack → Send an automated notification alert Email → Notify the team directly Wherever you choose to send this data, you can attach any relevant details from Clay, such as: - Emails & phone numbers - Company data - Lead details - Intent signals (e.g., visited your pricing page) This setup gives SDRs better visibility on leads and the best timing for outreach. Clay also integrates with HubSpot and Salesforce for seamless CRM updates. Might help a few SDRs and sales teams.

How I Used MadKudu + Clay to Automate a 3-Tier Outbound Campaign ⬇️ Not all leads deserve the same level of effort. Some need direct SDR attention. Others fit a multi-channel campaign. And some? Just need a basic email! Here’s how I used MadKudu and Clay to segment leads based on ICP fit and route them accordingly: Step 1: Get the Work Email Used Clay to find verified work emails. This is critical because MadKudu requires an email to generate a lead score. Step 2: Score Leads with MadKudu Ran emails through MadKudu’s integration to get a Company Fit Score and key signals. The score tells us how well each lead matches our ICP based on firmographics, past conversions, and revenue potential. Added this score as a column in Clay. Step 3: Route Leads Based on Score ✅ Tier 1 (Score ≥ 93) → Sent to SDRs via HubSpot These are high-value leads that match ICP perfectly. Created contacts directly in HubSpot so reps could prioritize them. ✅ Tier 2 (Score 80-92) → Multi-Channel Campaign Mid-tier leads go into a multi-channel sequence. Used Clay to find recent news about the company. Used OpenAI to generate hyper-personalized copy based on significant events. ✅ Tier 3 (Score < 80) → Scaled Email Campaign Lower-priority leads don’t justify enrichment spend. Sent them into a generic but targeted email campaign instead. Why This Works - Saves Clay credits by only enriching high-value leads. 🔹 Keeps SDRs focused on the best accounts instead of wasting time. 🔹 Uses AI + automation to maximize efficiency at every tier. Outbound works better when you focus on quality, not just volume. Check the video below for an in depth walkthrough of the entire flow ⬇️ #clay #madkudu #outbound

How a Clay-Powered GTM System Transforms 10,000 Weekly Leads Into 350 Qualified Opportunities Sales and GTM teams know this challenge: Too many potential leads with not enough signal to identify which ones actually matter, or an unstructured TAM wich little rich data on how to prioritize accounts. Let's look at an end-to-end system that changes how startups handle lead qualification at scale. This isn't about adding another tool to the stack – it's about re-thinking what's possible with go-to-market execution in 2025. From Signal Overload to Precision Targeting This system processes around 10,000 weekly leads triggered by marketing email interactions and automatically: 1. Filters out 95% of non-ICP leads using rigorous qualification criteria 2. Only enriches high-value contacts with validated work emails 3. Routes qualified leads directly into the CRM with proper field formatting 4. Triggers automated outreach from the appropriate rep's account What previously required teams to manually review thousands of leads now happens hands-off. What's the alternative Without a system like this, it's by and large one of these two: → Manual overload: SDRs spend hours reviewing thousands of low-quality leads → Missed opportunities: Arbitrary sampling means missing high-value prospects hiding in the data The real power isn't just automation – it's the sophisticated qualification engine using data points most companies can't efficiently access: → Director+ seniority filtering via title parsing → Funding stage and amount verification → Sales hiring detection using custom web scrapers → Multi-tier scoring logic with business-specific criteria Real-World Impact This isn't theoretical – the system currently: → Processes tens of thousands of weekly inbound leads → Identifies roughly 350 tier-one qualified opportunities → Triggers personalized outreach from the right rep → Maintains complete data integrity across all systems Everything runs through Clay with custom AI agents and intelligent workflows making decisions that were previously impossible to automate. Beyond Basic Enrichment → Custom AI agents gather data 40x cheaper than standard enrichments → Strategic qualification before enrichment means only paying for data on qualified leads → Proper CRM integration with field mapping → Auto-cleanup workflows maintain system efficiency It's one of the systems Brendan Short and I are building together. Hit us up if you're interested in seeing what's possible and sensible for your GTM. 🎥 Hands-on how this looks in the clip below, architecture and the actual system. 🗯️ I've got a detailed 45-minute walkthrough showing exactly how this system works column by column. Drop a comment for access to the full technical breakdown.

POV: Your SDR has booked you a new meeting (and you know it is gonna be a waste of your lifetime) ... Then your manager says "Drop everything. Go into the meeting. Sounds like a GREAT opportunity. Disclaimer: I don’t blame SDRs (I was one). I blame sales orgs that lack proper lead scoring. Most teams rely on generic criteria that don’t align with their sales strategy. That’s a recipe for wasted time. Here’s how to fix it with AI-powered lead scoring using Clay 🔹 Start with clear criteria Your scoring model should reflect your ideal customer. In our case, we prioritize: - Company headcount: Larger companies = higher scores. - Industry fit: Software, venture capital, agencies, and recruiting get priority. - Seniority: Decision-makers matter, so C-suite and VPs rank higher. 🔹 Data enrichment is everything Most inbound leads only come with a name, email, and company name. We use Clay to enrich: - Find LinkedIn profiles via reverse waterfall enrichment. - Extract company domains and industry information. - Use AI to categorize job titles into seniority levels. 🔹 Apply a structured scoring model Once enriched, we score leads based on: - Headcount: 500+ employees? Higher score. - Seniority: Directors and C-suite get priority. - Industry: Software, VC, and marketing agencies rank highest. By automating data collection and applying AI-driven categorization, we make sure sales teams focus on the most valuable leads. Are you using lead scoring in your CRM? 

Everyone’s chasing the perfect AI stack and the sexiest demo. Let me break that buzz with a boring but critical starting point- data with Clay. This week, I spoke with multiple GTM and RevOps operators about where to start with AI. The most surprising (and unanimous) insight? Data quality and access to amount and quality of data still make or break everything. For us, Clay + lead enrichment was the unsexy, high-impact first step. Not flashy. Not fun. But absolutely foundational. For me, it was like leg day with a knee brace on. What used to take SDRs hours manual LinkedIn digging, CRM clean-up is now done in seconds. And when one tool misses data? Clay quietly switches to another. Fallback logic, no drama and no need to manage multiple data vendors, consume all through Clay. What I didn’t expect? Confidence tagging. Every lead came with a score and source log. You don’t just get enriched data, you know how much to trust it. This gave time back to our SDRs. It’s CRM insurance and it makes every downstream motion of scoring, routing, personalization, forecasting actually work. I get why people want to start with chatbots or AI email writers. They demo better. But if your foundation layer is broken, the shiny stuff won’t save you. Start with enrichment. Even if you hate leg day.